All posts tagged Altered Carbon

When you have a character who is a badass killing machine, you want to set up a scenario when they’re allowed to go all-out. Maybe not on the cogs in the wheel of an unjust system. The cogs Kovachs just gunned down in the corridors.

What’s interesting about media is that characters are rarely called upon to make the banal moral compromises most of us have to to pay rent. So when our dude starts killing every minimum wage worker and middle-manager trying to get by in a world run by disengaged Methuselahs it takes me a minute to realize we’re supposed to be rooting for him. Ew.

I’m also angry he only uses his gun’s retractable bullet thing once in this whole series. Like…what’s the point, man?

You may be excited to learn that this is the last Blood and Chrome to get pushed to the feed. The other six episodes will be linked on VanVelding.com as I edit them and next week we will resume Star Trek: The Next Generation with “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II.”

The Beige and The Bold is available on iTunes, Stitcher, and other podcasting platforms. It updates Sunday nights at 12:00 PM ET / 11:00 PM CST. Season four of Star Trek: The Next Generation begins October 21st.

Two people fight to the death and I’m still fighting a hardcore case of yawns here. This episode’s central theme is that the wealthy are corrupt, but it can’t even draw a clear bead on that point and fire. It’s allegory that fails to link its allegory–the long life of the Methuselahs–with what it represents–obscene wealth and the detachment it brings.

Also, there aren’t enough frowny faces on the emoji menu of your keyboard to express my disappointment with the Kovachs-sleeps-with-Miriam plot. It just fizzles out and it’s not no one gives, a damn; it’s that Altered Carbon works so hard to inform us that someone would and then never pays that off.

The Beige and The Bold is available on Stitcher and other podcasting platforms. It updates Sunday nights at 12:00 PM ET / 11:00 PM CT. Season four of Star Trek: The Next Generation begins October 21st.

Man, does this title even work? In that everyone in this setting is pretty damn fallen, it’s not really–oooh, it’s probably about the girl who fell into the lake from the cloud layer and died.

I’m doing these solo now and I’m doing my best. I have a lot of questions and a lot of speculation. Is Abboud having sex with Ortega’s mom?

…other questions.

The mystery itself is going to plod along and I expect it will unfurl alongside the setting.

The video version of this episode can be found on YouTube: https://youtu.be/c5TmxJM1vas

The Beige and The Bold is available on Stitcher and other podcasting platforms. It updates Sunday nights at 12:00 PM ET / 11:00 PM CT. Season four of Star Trek: The Next Generation begins October 21st.

During our break, The Beige and The Bold is going to watch Netflix’s Altered Carbon, a ten part series which explores a future world in which human consciousness can be reduced to an electronic signal and stored in devices called a stack. In an inversion of our usual roles, Derek has seen Altered Carbon and I have not.

We cover a lot of stuff and I freely admit I’m one of those guys who’s a bit prickly when they’re not on familiar ground. My initial impression of Altered Carbon is that it has a lot of potential and is a fine show, but is so eager about telling its story that it sometimes forgets the basics.

Time will tell if I’m wrong.

A video version of this episode can be found on You Tube: https://youtu.be/_aE77g-Eapc

The Beige and The Bold is available on Stitcher and other podcasting platforms. It updates Sunday nights at 12:00 PM ET / 11:00 PM CT. Season four of Star Trek: The Next Generation begins October 21st.